The Differences

…between Casual Rex, which I’ve kvetched about before, and my new book, The Graveyard Shift, are significant. While Casual Rex was predictable, it was well written. Even though the story line could be easily anticipated, I read to the very end. Why? Sentences were often wonderfully creative and the characters were consistently developed.

On the other hand, in The Graveyard Shift, the protagonist is wildly inconsistent. He’s a community college drop out who’s lazy as fuck, not especially bright, jobless, plays video games all night and lives in his parents basement.

And yet, he describes someone ‘losing their leverage’ instead of the more likely for this character ‘slipping and falling on his ass.’

He talks about an imminent barf episode where the puke is almost at his ‘tonsils.’ Not a creatively astute boy, wouldn’t he just say the the throw up was at his throat?

The character, in dissing one of the monsters, says he’s like something out of Dante’s Inferno. It’s already clear to me that there’s NO damn way this kid’s (he’s 21) ever read the Inferno.

The pièce de résistance, so far for me, was when a high toned, wealthy but nasty lady comes into the 24/7 Dairy Mart (Demon Mart) where he now works, and becomes possessed. By the time she’s depossessed her leg’s horribly broken, she’s covered in vomit and her mink coat is drenched in holy water and filth. When the ambulance comes to take her to the hospital, NO cover story is given as to how she became so battered (the demons are a secret). The rich women’s ONLY concern is that her gold colored sneaker will need to be cut off. She shrieks about how much it cost. OH please! I have silver sneakers (which cost the same as the gold ones). If I can afford another pair, Mrs. Thurston Howell III surely can too.

The book screams of I was self-published (it was) without any editing advice (obviously not). I’m still reading it though. Why? The story is fun, unpredictable and, scanning for all the inconsistencies, is actually fun. Honestly, was the writer not part of an advice giving book group?

The aspect that totally pisses me off is that anytime the author refers to an intimidating character who’s NOT a demon, they’re invariably big BLACK men. Not white supremacist assholes wearing half a dozen guns into the local 7/11 but muscular Black men.

Racist much?